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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....

When There is Not Enough Time

She looks at me, bags under her eyes. “Pray for me,” she says. “I’m overwhelmed and so worried that I won’t have time to finish what I need to do each week.”

I nod. I’ve had weeks like that.

Where every slot is filled on my planner.

When spare time is really just time to do more things.

The garden to weed.

The laundry to wash.

The people to call.

One hundred and sixty eight hours. One week. Impossible.

It’s those weeks where I’m usually interrupted.

By a knock on my bedroom door, a girl with mascara streaks and wet eyes, asking me to pray for her.

Or that boy I haven’t talked to in months, calling me around midnight when my room is covered with research papers and chocolate bar wrappers.

Or when my alarm goes off at 7AM on a Sunday morning and I’ve barely slept all week and know that no one would know if I didn’t go to church.

One hundred and sixty eight hours. One week. Time that I have been given.

A gift from God.

I crawl into bed and it’s raining outside. I listen to the rhythm it makes against the glass of my bedroom window.

God’s plans are always accomplished.

My tasks each week > 168 hours.

I will not have time to complete them.

But God does not book me for His tasks in time slots that don’t exist.

Worry is useless. I may not have time to clean under the couch cushions, but I will have time to be used for every detail of His tasks.

“It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Psalm 127:2

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